My buddy Todd told me he’d just moved into a new place and that these were the first two books in his bookshelf. So I said, let’s go for a hike Saturday. Todd helps me write legal docs at work. Or I help him. I don’t know. The process is not unlike working with an editor or critique team for my novels. I craft some words and Todd improves them before presenting to Legal.

I’ve lived in Boulder County for over thirty years and never hiked Walker Ranch Loop. Unbelievable. To get there, you drive west on Baseline to where it turns into Flagstaff. You drive past the Flagstaff Restaurant and just keep going, maybe fifteen minutes, until you reach the trailhead.

I met a guy, Rob Decker, at the Jagger’s post-vax, house party last night. We were talking publishing and he mentioned he spent over a million dollars advertising on Facebook last year. Because he makes art posters out of national park photos that he shoots, styled after the 30s and 40s Works Progress Administration efforts, we eventually began a discussion on hiking. Rob told me to hike this loop clockwise, because these steps induce most of the mountain bikers to ride counter-clockwise. This photo only shows a fraction of the steps. Trust me, this is the original stairway to heaven.

Todd and I stopped occasionally to smell the roses, or in this case, one of the many star lilies that adorned the trail. The weather could not have been better with the air 59° and strong sunshine. Boulder Valley was under a Gulf Coast cloud cover all morning, wisps of which breached Walker Ranch via Eldorado Canyon. It reminded Todd of fog rolling into San Fransisco Bay, and it was like that in spots.

The loop starts out near the top of the trail and drops down to the South Boulder Creek. It then rises to the turn-around and drops back down to the creek on the return. The east-side four miles has a V-shape elevation profile and coming back on the western loop gives it a W-shape end-to-end.

We lunched on the creek on the return side, putting five miles behind us. The entire route is eight miles. We finished in about three and a half hours.

The trail is rated hard but I thought it was in our wheelhouse. Awesome training for my upcoming fifty-mile backpacking trek along the CDT in the Collegiates next month.

There were more runners on the trail than mountain bikers. If you can see well enough in this photo, there’s a lady behind the runners with four dogs on leashes. She said it was mostly an arm and upper body workout.

The 4 Nose Brewing Company just happened to be along our route on the drive home, so we stopped in for a tasty beverage and to replace calories lost on the trail. The irony of hiking past a woman walking four dogs on the trail was not lost on us.